


Control

by shykia1029



Series: Pre-Series Oneshots [2]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 02:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shykia1029/pseuds/shykia1029
Summary: When Veronica is twelve years old, she spills grape soda on a movie star’s couch.





	Control

When Veronica is twelve years old, she spills grape soda on a movie star’s couch.

Not just any movie star, either. She spills grape soda on _Aaron freaking Echolls’_ couch and it’s only the second time she’s even been to Logan’s house and she’s already ruined everything and will never be allowed over again.

Logan comes back into the living room with a package of Oreos and takes it all in, the cream-colored couch, the purple stain rapidly spreading across its cushion, Veronica’s wide, horrified eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “Oh my god, your mom and dad are going to hate me. Oh my god I’m so sorry.”

Logan catches her off guard with a shrug.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Rosa can get stains out of anything, it’ll be fine.”

“It probably costs more than my whole _house_ Logan I’m so sorry…”

A car pulls up in the driveway outside, and Logan’s eyes widen. 

“Here,” he says, grabbing the glass from her hand. “Listen, Veronica, you should go home, I’ll talk to my dad about the couch.” 

“He’s going to hate me,” Veronica whispers. The room spins. 

“Just go home, okay?” Logan says urgently enough that she doesn’t argue, she just nods and tries not to cry and opens the sliding glass back door and walks around the pool and goes through the gate and gets on her bike and rides home.

  


That night she does cry, thinking about the next day when Logan will tell her she can’t be his friend anymore and obviously Lilly and Duncan will pick him over her because he’s _Logan Echolls_ and she’s just Veronica Mars. 

The next morning, he approaches her in the courtyard of the middle school. 

“Hey, Pippi Longstocking,” he says, tugging on one of her pigtails with a grin. “What’s up?”

She blinks at him. “You’re not mad at me?”

Logan shakes his head. “What, about the couch? Nah, it’s fine. Pretty sure you did my mom a favor, she hated that couch. Now my dad has to let her get a new one.” 

“You… you told me to leave.” 

Logan shrugs. “If my mom found out I was alone in the house with a girl, she’d think it’s time to give me The Talk. Putting that off as long as possible.” His voice turns mischievous. “Don’t want them to find out I already know everything.” 

She laughs despite herself, partly out of relief and partly because her new friend is ridiculous. 

  


That summer, she breaks her arm. 

And it’s so stupid, because they were only climbing over Logan’s fence to get to his pool because the gate was locked and he forgot the gate key and he could have just gone around through the front door to let them in, but Lilly wanted to see if she could climb the gate and the boys weren’t going to let her get away with being the only one to do it. 

Veronica is the last to try, after Lilly and then Logan and then Duncan have successfully clambered over with varying degrees of grace. 

“You can do it,” Lilly says through the bars. 

“Or you could just let her in,” Logan points out. Lilly sticks her tongue out at him. 

“You know she can do it. You can do it, Veronica.”

And despite Logan’s very fair point Veronica _wants_ to do it so she does, and she makes it all the way to the top before she loses her balance and lands in front of her friends at just the wrong angle and hears a horrible snap. 

“Shit!” she shrieks, and before they can register that she’s actually hurt everyone looks a little impressed because it’s the worst word they’ve ever heard her use. “Oh my god. Shitshitshit.” 

Then at once they all react, Duncan says, “I’ll go get help,” and Lilly kneels beside her and says, “Oh my god Veronica are you okay oh my god I’m so sorry Logan do something!”

Veronica can’t think very well through the pain and her mind is spinning out of control but she does realize that Logan probably can’t actually do anything more than what Duncan is already doing by getting help. But he seems to want to try because he drops down next to her and takes the hand that isn’t limp at her side and holds it tightly. 

“Ronnie,” he says. “Look at me.”

And his hand in hers grounds her enough that she does, looking into his eyes, blurry through the tears in her own. 

“Don’t hold your breath,” he says. She hadn’t even realized she had been but she had so she lets out a long breath of air. “That’ll make it worse. Breathe.”

She nods and breathes and watches his eyes and holds his hand until Duncan returns with Mrs. Echolls.

  


The next time she sees her friends, she has a cast on her right arm. 

Duncan looks freaked out and Lilly looks guilty but Logan just shakes his head and says, “Of course you went with the pink.” 

Veronica sticks her tongue out at him. “And what would you get?” she asks, and he shrugs. 

“I already did.” He gestures towards his left leg. “Three years ago. And I got black.” His voice lowers to a whisper. “ _Like my soul._ ”

“If she got black, we couldn’t sign it,” Lilly points out, and produces a Sharpie. 

She lets her friends go first, Lilly in big looping letters and a heart over the i, Duncan in careful cursive, Logan in small, choppy print that’s even worse than his usual handwriting. Later, more people sign it, and when Dick Casablancas feels the need to illustrate his signature Logan helps her turn it into a weird, lopsided flower and she wonders if he actually thinks his soul is black. 

  


When Veronica is fourteen, Logan throws a party for no reason other than his parents taking an overnight trip to LA and leaving him home with only Trina who really doesn’t seem to care at all what he does. 

As she and Lilly get ready, Veronica steels her resolve. “I’m going to get drunk tonight,” she says decisively. 

Lilly gasps and whirls away from her vanity to face her. 

“Veronica Mars!”

“I want to try it. Tonight seems like a good time, right? I mean, you won’t let me die?”

Lilly laughs, bright and merry. 

“No, Veronica. There will be no dying tonight. We're going to live forever, remember?” 

  


Logan hears of her mission and makes it his own to guide her. 

“Okay,” he says, holding out a shot glass. “Don’t sip it, okay? Just down it. It’ll be easier.” 

Veronica has never tasted alcohol beyond watered-down beer at other house parties and the sip of champagne her father let her have last New Year’s Eve. She downs the shot Logan gives her in one go, just like he says. Her throat burns and her eyes fill with tears that she blinks away in embarrassment. 

“How do people drink so much of this?” she gasps, and Logan hands her another shot. 

“Because,” he says. “The more you drink, the better it tastes.”

Then he downs his own shot, not even flinching. 

  


Later, he finds her upstairs, knocking on the hallway bathroom door. 

“Let me in,” she says to the door. “I feel... feel weird.” 

Whoever is in the bathroom doesn’t seem inclined to let her in, so she lets him take her gently by the elbow and steer her down the hall. 

“You can use mine,” he says, and as they enter his room she dissolves into a fit of giggles. 

“If your mom finds out I was in your room,” she says, “she’ll definitely give you The Talk.” 

She flops onto his bed. 

“There’s a _girl_ in your _bed_ ,” she says, eyes wide at the scandal of it all. “Logan Echolls, whatever will your mother say?” 

“You’re not a girl,” Logan says, and Veronica laughs when he blinks rapidly because he obviously didn’t mean to say it. She wonders distantly if she should feel offended.

“I’m not? What am I?” 

“You’re…” Logan trails off, then finishes lamely, “You’re Veronica.”

She considers this for a moment, staring at his ceiling, at the fan above his bed slowly spinning, around and around and around, then looks at him, feeling happier than she ever has before. 

“I guess this is why she does it,” she says, contemplatively. 

Logan doesn’t question that, just falls back on the bed and watches the fan with her. 

  


Later, when she’s emptying her stomach into his toilet, Logan is behind her, holding her hair back over her shoulders and smiling wryly when she looks up at him, eyes full of tears.

“You okay, Ronnie?’

“Yeah,” Veronica says, taking a deep breath. “I’m okay.”

  


Three weeks later, Duncan kisses Veronica for the first time. 

They’re at the beach with Lilly and Logan but they’re out in the water splashing and dunking each other. She and Duncan are sitting in companionable silence, sharing a towel so they’re close enough to make her heart pound, and she thinks _Nothing will ever be better than this_.

Then Duncan says, “Veronica,” and she turns her head to look at him and his lips catch hers in a soft brush that makes her head spin and she amends that no, nothing will ever be better than _this_. 

  


She lies in her bed and pretends to be asleep as her parents argue in furtive whispers. 

“You can’t just interrogate me like I’m one of your suspects,” her mother hisses. “I can’t control her, I can’t control what she does-“

“You could _pretend_ to _care_ what she does!” her father retorts. “She’s out late doing god knows what and you don’t even care as long as she’s out of the house and you can get plastered in peace!”

“And you were where?” her mother snaps, forgetting to lower her voice. “You only knew where she was because you’re the almighty sheriff they call when teenagers are out driving illegally in the middle of the night.”

Veronica hears the front door open.

“Where are you going?” her father asks, and her mother doesn’t respond, she just slams the door behind her. 

  


Sometimes the four of them are together and Duncan and Lilly will start bickering and Veronica and Logan will just watch them in bemusement from their front-row seats.

She wonders if Lilly and Logan will ever get married. She’d never admit it, at least not yet, but she thinks about years down the line and marrying Duncan and buying their own place, not as fancy as the Kane mansion but nice and clean and close to the beach. She thinks about sharing a bed with him and holding him and loving him and knowing he would never hurt her. 

She thinks maybe she loves Logan too, but the thought doesn’t bother her because it’s different, she’s not _in love_ with her best friend’s boyfriend just like her best friend loves but isn’t _in love_ with her own brother. 

Duncan makes her feel like she can’t breathe in the most wonderful way but it’s only here, sitting next to Logan, not really alone but alone enough, that she feels like she really _can_ breathe. 

“Logan,” she says, and he turns to her and she opens her mouth then closes it again before she can ask _You’d never hurt me, right?_

“Yeah?” he prompts.

“Nothing,” she says, and he rolls his eyes and tugs gently on her ponytail. 

“Want to go broker a truce?” he asks, because Lilly and Duncan are quickly getting to that point where the fight isn’t funny anymore. 

She looks at him and thinks that maybe he would hurt her. Sometimes he loses control of an argument with Lilly or Duncan or whoever and he knows just how to spit the right venom at his adversary and it’s never happened with her, but maybe someday it will. 

She thinks that Duncan would never hurt her and Logan might but Logan would never let anyone else in the world hurt her and she doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. 

She thinks about that time she wanted to pierce her bellybutton because everyone else was doing it and Lilly wanted them to do it together and her father asked her if she would jump off a bridge just because her friends asked her to. 

And she thinks that, if she’s being honest, she would jump off a bridge if Lilly or Duncan asked. She doesn’t know if she would if Logan asked but it doesn’t even matter because she does know that he never would. 

“Yeah,” she says, after realizing he’s still waiting for an answer. “You get him, I’ll get her, okay?” 

“Sir, yes sir,” Logan says with a mock salute. 

  


Veronica is sixteen when her best friend is murdered.

  


The Kanes have a wake for Lilly at their house and Duncan stands by the buffet table staring into space but Veronica can’t find Logan anywhere until she thinks to check Lilly’s room. 

He’s sitting on her bed, holding the cheap stuffed frog that used to sit on her dresser by her jewelry box. 

“Did you give that to her?” she asks, sitting down next to him. 

“No,” Logan says. “Remember, she was mad that they found my flask in my locker and I had to work that booth instead of taking her to the school carnival? She brought that guy from Hearst and made him throw darts at my booth and win her this stupid fucking frog just to piss me off. Then we got back together but she kept it anyway. I think it was, like, a punishment or something.” 

“Right,” Veronica says. “I forgot.”

His eyes are red when he looks into hers, then he glances down at her mouth and glances up again and then the frog is on the ground and his mouth is on hers. 

Just like the last time they kissed, that night on the beach, he tastes like alcohol but this time it’s not the sweetness of champagne but the harsh bite of whiskey. 

She only thinks about that for a second, though, before the last of her control snaps because she’s so fucking tired of holding it and she starts kissing him back, letting him open her mouth with his tongue and push her back on the bed and slide his hand up her thigh and under the hem of her black dress.

When he moves away from her lips and kisses down her jawline and makes his way towards her neck she takes the opportunity to take a gasping breath and then her neck is wet and he isn’t kissing anymore, he’s just crying into her chest. 

“Fuck,” he says, letting go of her leg but not moving his head. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, that was… I’m so sorry.”

Veronica holds his head to her chest and wonders who he’s apologizing to.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay.”

“I loved her,” Logan says, pressing his eyes into her shoulder like her dress immediately soaking up the tears will make them not exist. “I loved her so much.”

“I know,” Veronica says, and holds him. 

  


A week later, Veronica’s father brings Jake Kane in for questioning about his daughter’s murder. 

  


The day after that, Veronica learns that Logan is, in fact, capable of turning that venom onto her. 

  


The morning after Shelley Pomeroy’s end of the year party, Veronica stares at herself in her bathroom mirror and wipes the running makeup off her face and runs her hand down her long sheet of hair.

She feels an ache deep inside her and hears twelve-year old Logan in the back of her mind.

_Don’t hold your breath._

_That’ll make it worse._

_Just breathe._

She thinks about Logan tugging her pigtail and calling her Pippi Longstocking and holding her hair back when she threw up in his bathroom and grasping the back of her head that night on the beach when he kissed her more than he was supposed to.

And with every snip of the scissors, with every lock of blond hair that falls to her bathroom floor, Veronica feels lighter, feels like she can breathe deeper, feels firmer on her feet.

When she’s done, she looks at her shorn hair in the mirror and runs a hand through it and laughs with relief because she finally, _finally_ , feels in control.


End file.
